Book review: In bed with: Unashamedly Sexy Stories by Your Favourite Women Novelists

Published on Thursday 22 January 2009 08:14

IN BED WITH: Unashamedly sexy stories by your favourite women novelists Edited (and including stories by) Imogen Edwards-Jones, Jessica Adams, Kathy Lette and Maggie Alderson Sphere, 352pp, £7.99

HERE'S THE DILEMMA: DO I review this anthology of "sexy" stories using the criteria of literary criticism or those of thermodynamics (ie: makes me hot, or not)? Ultimately the question is moot: either way, this is a hit and miss affair. No pun intended.

The trouble with erotica is linguistic. In trying too hard to distance itself from the rough and tumble of porn, it fails to deliver. I cannot get excited by a story containing the words glans or labia. I might as well leaf through a medical dictionary for all the tingling such clinical pillow talk produces. And where does one begin describing the anaphrodisiac effect of the phrase "my closed rose" to indicate the anus?

Porn, on the other hand, is vigorous and crude. As a result, it's honest. It doesn't, ahem, beat around the bush (unless that's what you really, really want). Plus, porn's absurd repetitiveness is laugh-out-loud hilarious. Erotica is a giggle.

As anyone knows, the perception of pleasure, like pain or beauty, is highly personal, so throughout the remainder of this review, bear in mind that I'd rather laugh out loud than titter behind my fan.

So much for preliminaries, then. As if the premise were not sufficient, the stories appear under X-rated pseudonyms. There's a genuine contributors section at the back – with such name brands as Stella Duffy, Joanne Harris, Fay Weldon and Esther Freud on board, you'd be foolish not to have one – but there's no index linking them to their work. How coy, mistress.

I have guessed (though this remains unverified) only three of the secret identities. "Breaking the Rules" has to be the work of Kathy Lette, the woman who never met a pun she didn't like or repeat too often. I'm obviously not a fan, but cheerfully award her full points for restraint and commend hers as one of the better stories. She avoids overloading it with bad jokes and wordplay, and conjures respectably hot girl-boy action, along with a sly ending.

I would wager that "Prairie Vole", with its laboratory setting and erudition, is by Fay Weldon. Smart, also sly, and enjoyably silly, it's a pleasurable romp that's more amusing than arousing.

The star turn is "The Come On", which I would bet springs from the imaginative pen of Ali Smith. Most of the other writers seem to have lost sight of their craft. They're so overly concerned with providing gasps per page and rushing toward the very literal climax, that they forget they're here to write stories. You know, those things containing, among other things, a beginning, middle and end, a point of view, proper characters – the full Monty.

Smith (if I've attributed the story correctly) delivers an exquisite exploration of the nature and nurture of desire, in language both playful and psychologically believable. As a work of art this would enhance any anthology, themed or not. I give it ten out of ten.

There are a couple of "bonking the hired help" stories, the best of which is "The Peacock", with its humane, underlying sweetness. I'd also like to cite "After the Funeral", a friends reunited tale that's singular in that the characters are in their sixties, thus it's not about young, taut frames performing acrobatic sexual feats.

That leads me to my greatest frustration. I hated the predictability of too many of these pieces. You'd have thought they were written by and for boys, with their emphasis on "perfect" hair, breasts and legs, their fetishist descriptions of clothes and underwear, and their male-centric view of what's attractive about women and how they ought to behave in bed (or against a wall, in a public convenience, wherever ...).

A couple of last quibbles: how does it happen that two stories mention the Queen musical We Will Rock You? Is this a hint that weird erotic longings for Ben Elton fire the loins of London's top lady writers, or an even more misguided yearning for the late Freddie Mercury? Finally, where is it written that books for women have to be pink?